Category Archives: KDE

a long time ago, the license of most parts of Kate/KWrite/KatePart/KTextEditor was LGPLv2+ (in the old time, where it was named KWritePart/Kant/…, the original KWrite had that license originally, at least all parts of the component of it).

Then, we changed that to be LGPLv2 (only).

It seems, that was a poor choice, as we now run in v2 vs. v3 vs. any later version problems.

Most parts of the code are easy to relicense, as the contributors either acknowledged the request to change the license to that to the Kate team (on kwrite-devel@kde.org) or added themselves to the relicensecheck.pl in kde-dev-scripts.git.

KTextEditor is now LGPLv2+ only, which is nice 😉

KatePart is only missing the re-licensing of some files.

Kate has more files to look at, but should be less a problem, as it has less people that did commits, compared to the part.

So, if you didn’t already get a mail from me about some “please allow on kwrite-devel@kde.org for license change to LGPLv2+” and you know you have contributed, even if it was only some patch, it would be really nice to get some short “I am ok with LGPLv2+” on kwrite-devel@kde.org.

That will make it much easier to sort out the remaining issues!

This really would help to have no licensing issues coming up in the future years and further incompatibilities. I really would like to strife for LGPLv2+ only code in KTextEditor/KatePart/Kate, at least in the core parts (e.g. without the plugins), which seems to be realistic in the short term to reach.

After the initial porting of KTextEditor interfaces and KatePart, now the Kate application itself runs on KF5, too.
It still has a LOT of issues (and I marked all commented out pieces with FIXME KF5), but at least, it launches and loads the essential file tree plugin and allows you to open files via the “Open” action. Any help in fixing the remaining issues is welcome (and removing deprecated cruft), but keep in mind, it might eat all the files you edit 🙂

That means now all stuff in the “frameworks” branch of kate.git beside the “addons” directory containing plugins/plasma stuff at least compiles and launches with KF5.

Now the question is how we handle further development. Shall we switch to “frameworks” for all major stuff in interfaces/part/application and only let feature work be done in the “master” branch for addons (which we then can port later on)?

After starting the “frameworks” branch in kate.git more than a week ago but doing not much beside an initial KTextEditor compile & link port I felt a big guilty 😉

Given a lot of people blog about the progress of programs X and Y for Qt 5.2 and KDE Frameworks 5 I guess it is time that KatePart joins this club.

Some hours later, a ‘working’ version of KatePart and KWrite have landed in the “frameworks” branch of kate.git. KWrite launches, loads the part and the open action even works (command line parsing is off-line btw. ATM).

From the let it run 😉 commit on, KWrite should at least launch and open files via file dialog and here is the mandatory screenshot (a KDE Frameworks 5 KWrite over an Kate 4.x window):

I marked all places where I commented stuff out or did a hack with “FIXME KF5” in a comment or “#if 0” region. Help welcome, Kate application still to be ported 😉 But please mark your “hacks” in the same fashion, otherwise, we will never find them again.

To remember the history, the initial KatePart KDE 4 port happened more than 8 years ago, here a screenshots of that time (2005-05-15):

I think the first KDE Frameworks 5 version looks a bit better. Thanks a lot for all the people getting both the kdelibs frameworks branch in such good shape and all the contributors to Qt 5.x!

The Kate team will do its best to make the KDE Frameworks 5 version of Kate as popular as the 4.x variant is.